All posts tagged: farmers

Somewhere between the UNESCO-inscribed rice terraces of Banaue and Hungduan, the passions of one woman converged to make a colorful venture with a farming community. Candice Reyes Alipio, an avid knitter and mountaineer, runs Knitting Expedition, a social enterprise that aims to augment the income of women farmers in Uhaj, a little-known village in Ifugao that remains dependent on rice farming. Located half an hour from the drop-off point for visitors to Banaue, Uhaj itself is not much of a tourist draw. At best, it is a rest stop for trekkers on their way to Hungduan and a place to sleep for those who seek the comforts of a charming inn in the village. Work is scarce – if there is any at all, outside farming – and more and more women are abandoning their rice fields for the big cities, where they often end up as household helpers. The men work as laborers or miners in neighboring provinces. “The purpose of Knitting Expedition is really to keep them in their lands,” Alipio said. “Rice …

There are a lot of open secrets at the Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac. The most open and the least secret are the arrienda or leasing out of property being arranged by farmers even before the contentious land is distributed to them. The Department of Agrarian Reform has heard the same whispers, too, from different places. But by this time, the government knows talk is cheap, so it’s letting its money talk back—loud and clear. “It’s illegal and we will not honor that, but it’s real on the ground. That’s why this is what we’re solving first,” Agrarian Reform Undersecretary Jerry Pacturan said. “If you see the amounts we have now, it’s really quite substantial: P2 billion for credit fund, P1 billion for insurance, P2 billion for ARCCESS, which are mostly equipment and services. That’s about P5 billion that will have to be spent for the year,” he said. Pacturan heads the DAR’s support services office. ARCCESS is Agrarian Reform Community Connectivity and Economic Support Services, a massive and systematic effort by the DAR to help …